NSA Director Says Data Programs Foiled Plots

Gen. Keith B. Alexander, director of the National Security Agency, testifies during a Senate hearing on cybersecurity on Wednesday
Associated Press

By

Siobhan Hughes And

Siobhan Gorman

Updated June 12, 2013 7:30 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON—The director of the National Security Agency, defending his agency after days of furor over secret data-surveillance programs, said those government efforts had prevented dozens of terrorist attacks in recent years.

Testifying before a Senate committee, Army Gen.
Keith Alexander
didn't elaborate on the attacks that were stopped, other than to tie them to two well-known foiled 2009 plots. He said he would brief senators privately on Thursday and would push to make available more details about attacks that were foiled.

His comments marked a clear campaign by the Obama administration to justify the surveillance programs after revelations last week exposed how the NSA uses classified orders from a secret court to amass the phone records of tens of millions of Americans. Those disclosures came from leaks engineered by
Edward Snowden,
a 29-year-old former NSA contractor who said in an interview published Wednesday that he is seeking asylum in Hong Kong.

In his Senate appearance Wednesday, Gen. Alexander, who joined the agency in 2005 and was a key executor of former President George W. Bush's warrantless-surveillance program, emphasized that NSA workers go to great lengths to respect the privacy of American citizens.

"We have great people working under extremely difficult conditions to ensure the security of this nation and protect our civil liberties and privacy," Gen. Alexander said.

"It's a very deliberate process," he said. "We don't get to look at the data. We don't get to swim through the data."

He said much of the system needs to remain classified, but he said he would push to make public orders by the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in response to requests by senators.

On the track record in terror investigations, Gen. Alexander said that "it's dozens of terrorist events that these have helped prevent."

He at first appeared to imply that the NSA phone-records program alone had allowed the agency to stop attacks. He later elaborated that a separate program involving collection of Internet records belonging to foreigners, called Prism, was also involved in the disruption of potential terror plots.

Gen. Alexander mentioned two cases that relied on data from the secret NSA programs to foil attacks: the 2009 New York City subway bombing plot by Najibullah Zazi, and a plot against a Danish newspaper by American David Coleman Headley the same year. Officials previously have cited the case of Mr. Zazi.

Gen. Keith Alexander testifies in front of lawmakers on Wednesday, stating that the NSA is "deeply committed" to the protection of privacy rights and that "dozens" of terror events have been curbed in their efforts. Photo: AP

Some senators emphasized concerns over the programs' privacy implications for Americans' personal information.

"The American public is fearful that in this massive amount of data that you get that there is the ability of the federal government to synthesize that data and learn something more than maybe what was ever contemplated by the Patriot Act," Sen.
Mike Johanns
(R., Neb.) said.

Added Sen.
Tom Udall
(D., N.M.): "It's very, very difficult I think for us to have a transparent debate about secret programs approved by a secret court issuing secret court orders based on secret interpretations of the law."

Sen. Dick Durbin (D., Ill.), another civil-liberties advocate, asked why someone such as Mr. Snowden would have been able to have access to classified information.

Gen. Alexander replied: "Some of these folks have tremendous skills to operate networks."

He added that Mr. Snowden's ability to obtain those documents had uncovered a significant security problem and said intelligence agencies are taking an across-the-board look at the issue.

"I have grave concerns about that—the access that he had," he said.

The Senate Appropriations Committee hearing had been called to examine U.S. cybersecurity programs, but the hearing veered toward the weeklong controversy as senators got their first chance to ask questions publicly about the two NSA programs. Gen. Alexander acknowledged that the leaks had forced the administration to provide details about sensitive programs and that they will need to provide additional information to justify the programs' value.

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